


Tales from the Herald's Land

by PoboboProbably



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol, Cassandra Pentaghast's Disgusted Noises, Comedy, Gen, Hinterlands (Dragon Age), POV Cassandra, POV Cassandra Pentaghast, Rampant hooliganry, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 11:30:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoboboProbably/pseuds/PoboboProbably
Summary: Inquisitor-to-be Lera Trevelyan tells a story from her past while escorting a druffalo through the Hinterlands of Ferelden. Cassandra Pentaghast is not amused.





	Tales from the Herald's Land

“So… how do we move him?” Cassandra asked, staring at the druffalo with a raised eyebrow and hoping an idea would come to her. “Perhaps we could bait him with food?”

“He seems to be content to graze right here,” the elf argued, noting that the beast stared dutifully at the grass before him. 

“Have you got any other ideas, Seeker?” inquired Varric, his trademark grin and wink inspiring her to grunt loudly her dissatisfaction. 

“Maybe we should ask the Herald,” she suggested instead, pointing with her chin at Lady Trevelyan, who bit her lip in thought at the druffalo. Without speaking, she sidled up to the animal and scratched under his chin. Then she stepped away and, miraculously, Druffy actually followed her! “That was… impressive, Herald. It would seem your mark can do more than simply close rifts.”

“What?” the Herald asked her, furrowing her brows as if the notion was unbelievable. “No, I’ve just had experience working with druffalo before.”

“Is that right?” Varric wondered aloud. “How does a noblewoman from the Marches end up working with druffalo?”

The Herald simply chuckled in response as she led the way out of the small cave and began walking back towards the farm.

“What is so funny?” Cassandra asked suspiciously.

“Nothing, this just reminds me of a night in Ostwick when a few friends and I got very drunk.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes. Yet more levity and debauchery. She couldn’t comprehend why the Maker would send them such a blasphemous person in their time of need instead of someone with faith and principles, or even a basic sense of morality. Instead, the fledgling Inquisition’s fate rested in the hands of a crazed hooligan. Solas looked around at his company as if waiting for one of them to speak. When no one did, he cleared his throat.

“And what about this task inspired that thought?” he asked, running spindly fingers across his staff. “To find inside a bar a beast like this…”

“Of course I didn’t meet a druffalo in a tavern, Solas,” the Herald assured him. “I was with three of my friends that night. Kara, Dev, and Han. I think I was twenty or twenty-one at the time, and the four of us were exploring parts of Ostwick we’d never been to. Well, we walked into a tavern on the northern side of the city and ordered our drinks. I can’t remember what I’d asked for, but it was delicious. I ordered another six of them before we left.”

Cassandra felt her eyes widen as she was subjected to the Herald’s tale. True, in her younger days, she’d had her fair share of adventurous nights, but nothing as outrageous as seven drinks in a strange tavern. And unlike the Herald, she felt the appropriate amount of shame for some of her behavior.

“What happened next?” Varric egged her on. It came as no surprise that the dwarf thought the story was one worth being told.

“Honestly, I don’t remember much else, the drink was that good.” The Herald waved away the question as though she was proud of having lost the memories. “Best I’ve ever had, actually. A shame I could never find that tavern again. We left not long after my seventh or eighth drink, all of us completely pissed, though we must have taken some spirits with us because none of us would sober up until much later.

“One thing I _do_ remember is walking out of the city in the small hours with bottles under our arms and mud on our boots. Can’t remember how the mud got there. Anyway, the more interesting part was that Kara had dressed up in Chantry robes.” Cassandra perked an ear to this part of the story, hoping that some morals might find their way into it after all. The Herald extinguished that hope by continuing, however. “Keep in mind, Kara isn’t a Chantry sister. Maker only knows how she got her hands on the robes.”

“I certainly hope you did not steal them, Herald,” Cassandra judged, giving Lady Trevelyan a side-eye and making no attempt to hide her disdain.

“Oh, don’t worry about the Seeker, Lera. She’s just being grumpy as usual.” 

“That’s alright, Varric,” the Herald answered, patting the druffalo’s head while beaming a wry smile at Cassandra. “She was the right hand of the Divine.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” she demanded, hand on her hip.

“Nothing at all! Just that I’ll never take anything you say seriously, of course.”

Cassandra sighed and sped along the path to put some distance between herself and the band of heathens she was forced to work with. _Maker_ , she thought, _lend me the strength not to kill the Herald myself._

Still within earshot, she heard Varric encourage Lady Trevelyan to finish telling the tale. Choosing not to participate in the conversation, she kept her eyes forward and did her best to ignore it. That proved quite difficult.

“Kara was having a lot of fun with it. She would keep scolding us for the smallest little infractions, just like a real Chantry sister would. ‘Oh, Lera, do be a good girl and stop slouching so much!’” The Herald’s ridiculous impression was met with much laughter, despite the obvious exaggeration of her pitch and cadence. “‘Dearest Hanrael, I do wish you would just stop being such a heathen elf!’”

“That’s spot on, isn’t it, Seeker?” the dwarf called out. She took as deep a breath as she could manage, grinding her teeth to keep herself from reacting. _Just ignore them, Cassandra…_

“I fail to see how this relates, Herald,” Solas interjected before the dwarf could attempt to ask a second time. “You have not said a word about the beast.”

“I’m almost there, Solas,” she said in an ameliorating tone. “Truth be told, I can’t remember where we went after leaving the city. But we must have found a farm at some point after we’d hired a carriage.”

“What do you mean?” 

“I remember uncorking a bottle of wine and putting it to my lips and then… nothing else. We woke up in the carriage halfway to Markham two days later. I remember feeling something dense and hairy under my head, like I was using it for a pillow. When I sat up, it was a druffalo calf.”

“Andraste’s ass, Lera!” Aside from his foul tongue, Cassandra shared Varric’s reaction. To lose two days of memory to alcohol and end up with a poor baby druffalo… The Maker clearly had a sense of humor that outmatched her own.

“That’s not all!” she yelled excitedly. “The calf had Dalish markings painted on its face and, though we couldn’t remember who, all of us were fairly certain that one of us was married to it.”

“Married to a druffalo calf? And I thought Hawke got up to some weird shit,” Varric laughed. She felt her temperature rise at the mention of the Champion’s name. “I think the Herald might just give Hawke a run for his money, Seeker!”

Cassandra hunched forward, leaning into her steps and inwardly daring the dwarf to provoke her again.

“So what did you do with the calf, pray tell?” Solas wondered. “I strongly doubt you kept it in your care.”

“You’re right, Solas. We asked the driver to turn around and we dropped the calf off at the first ranch we saw on the way back to Ostwick. I named it Braddock, after my brother.”

Cassandra let the beginnings of a laugh escape from her control, covering her mouth and regretting it immediately.

“I don’t believe it!” Varric gasped.

“Herald,” Solas drawled, “I think you’ve made Cassandra laugh.”

“I did _not_ laugh!” she fought back, turning around and stamping her boot into the dirt.

“I’m impressed!” the elf ignored her. “I never thought I’d even see her smile.”

“I said I was _not_ laughing!”

“Of course you weren’t Cassandra,” Lera taunted her with false agreement. “The Maker calls laughter a sin, doesn’t he?”

Cassandra threw her arms over her head and nearly screamed in her frustration as she resumed her course, stomping heavily down the trail.


End file.
